Chapter 60: First Laugh I stepped into the corridor and the air changed. Not in temperature, not in pressure, not in any way I could measure. It just felt different. Lighter. Like the walls had exhaled. Mirabel’s laugh came first. Not the laugh I remembered from the hospital, not the one choked by tubes or muffled by pain. This was pure. Unbroken. A child’s laugh, the kind that starts in the belly and spills out without permission. It bounced off the walls ahead, pulling me forward like a thread tied to my ribs. I didn’t run. I didn’t hesitate. I just walked, because that laugh was a hook in my chest and I had no choice but to follow. The corridor didn’t stretch or twist. It just ended. One step, and I was standing in our kitchen. Not a memory. Not a projection. Not a trick of the machine. This was the kitchen. The one with the chipped tile by the fridge. The one where Mom used to leave grocery lists stuck to the microwave with magnets shaped like fruit. The one where Dad burned toast every Sunday and pretended it was on purpose. I knew it the second I saw the juice stain on the linoleum near the table. I’d spilled apple juice there when I was seven. Mom never got it out. And there she was. Mirabel. Small. Barefoot. Wearing that yellow dress with the sunflowers she loved so much. Her hair was in two messy braids, one already coming undone. She was sitting at the table, legs swinging, humming to herself while she drew something on a piece of construction paper. I stood in the doorway, frozen. I didn’t belong here. This wasn’t a place I was allowed to be anymore. Not after what I did. Not after what I buried. But she didn’t see me. She was too busy concentrating on her drawing, tongue poking out the side of her mouth like it always did when she was focused. I remembered that. I remembered how Dad used to tease her about it. I remembered how she’d scrunch her nose and keep drawing anyway. I took a step forward. The floor creaked under my weight. She didn’t look up. I moved closer, slow, like if I breathed too loud the whole thing would shatter. I stopped beside the table, looking down at her. At the crayon in her hand. At the wobbly sun she was drawing in the corner of the page. Then I saw myself. Younger me. Maybe eight. Wearing that stupid dinosaur shirt I refused to take off for three weeks straight. I was standing at the counter, pouring juice into a glass. My hands were shaking. I always spilled when I poured. Mom used to say I had jelly hands. I watched myself tip the pitcher too far. The juice sloshed over the rim, splashing onto the counter, dripping onto the floor. A few drops landed on Mirabel’s drawing. She looked up. I braced for the scowl. The sigh. The “Elias, you ruined it!” Instead, she laughed. Not a giggle. Not a chuckle. A full, bright, head-thrown-back laugh. She pointed at the juice stain spreading across her sun, at my panicked face, at the puddle on the floor, and she just laughed. Like it was the funniest thing in the world. I remembered that laugh. I remembered standing there, juice dripping from my fingers, and feeling my own face crack into a grin because she was laughing and it was contagious and for one stupid, perfect second, nothing else mattered. I reached out. Not to touch her. Not to stop her. Just to be closer. To feel that moment again. To pretend, even for a second, that I hadn’t ruined everything that came after. My fingers brushed the edge of the table. The air cracked. Not like glass. Not like thunder. Like something deep inside the world had snapped. Mirabel’s laugh cut off mid-breath. The kitchen flickered. The walls bled white at the edges. The fridge hummed too loud, then too quiet, then not at all. The juice stain on the floor darkened, spreading like ink. Younger me dropped the pitcher. It didn’t shatter. It just vanished before it hit the ground. Mirabel turned her head. Not toward younger me. Toward me. Her eyes locked onto mine. Not angry. Not sad. Just… knowing. Like she’d been waiting for me to show up. Like she’d known I would ruin this too. I opened my mouth. I wanted to say something. Anything. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I forgot how bright you were. But no sound came out. The kitchen dissolved. The table. The chairs. The fridge. The juice stain. All of it peeled away like old wallpaper, curling into nothing. The corridor returned. But it wasn’t the same. The walls were darker. The air was heavier. The light overhead buzzed, low and angry. Mirabel stood beside me, silent. She didn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead, down the length of the new corridor. A sign hung above the archway at the end. BREATH #3: FIRST FIGHT. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I just stood there, staring at the sign, at the darkness beyond it, at the way the air seemed to coil around me like a warning. Mirabel shifted beside me. Her voice was quiet. Flat. No trace of the laugh left in it. “This one doesn’t laugh back.”